The name “Scaramucci” has become synonymous with a job which is held for an absurdly short period of time, less than two weeks. The name “Cawthorn” might become synonymous in a similar fashion, with a job which was basically bulletproof, but its holder managed to tank it anyhow.
Madison Cawthorn started out on a high roll. He was no more qualified to run for Congress than he was qualified to run in the Olympics, literally. He had a job answering the phone in Mark Meadows’ office, a job which reportedly he was lousy at.
That, and a managership at Chick-Fil-A, and one semester of college with a D average are what Cawthorn had to bring to Republican politics. But in this day and age, it proved to be enough. He sailed into office in a deep red district. All he had to do was keep his head down and his mouth shut and vote. That proved to be too tall an order for him and the rest is history. He was primaried. Here’s what’s left of the campaign.
Madison Cawthorn merch at the Goodwill. Can’t give it away. https://t.co/8vHpx8yvKN
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) October 3, 2022
If you remember the story of Icarus, he was a lot like Cawthorn. Icarus had a father, Daedalus, and Daedalus was an inventor. He invented a glorious set of waxen wings, which he gave to Icarus to wear, with the admonition, “don’t fly too close to the sun.” Icarus ignored his father, figuring he knew better. He behaved recklessly, soared way higher than he should have, the wings melted and he plunged to his death.
The myth is meant to illustrate hubris and the devastating consequences thereof. Cawthorn is the kind of guy who would have said to Icarus, “Hold my beer. I’ll show you hubris.” In effect, that’s what he did.
Nobody feels sorry for Cawthorn because nobody could stop him. He kept breaking rule after rule, in a mad plunge towards total self destruction.
This is what Cawthorn wrote to a friend a year or so after the accident that crippled him. Politico:
“I miss my life,” he said. “I miss being able to defend myself … being able to dress myself … being able to use the bathroom without someone helping me … I miss not peeing the bed because I have no control over my penis … not having to have pills keep me alive … being able to compete … being checked out by girls … I miss my pride as a man … the pride my father swelled with when he spoke my name … I miss,” he said, “not having to convince myself every day not to pull the trigger and end it all.”
Four and a half years after Cawthorn contemplated suicide, he was running for Congress. Turning a stirring story of conquering adversity into a shocking political victory, he achieved his most ambitious career goal at a staggeringly early age. And within weeks if not days of being sworn in — at 25 years old one of the youngest members in the history of the House — he had put himself on a short list of the chamber’s most known figures. Now, though, heading into his first reelection, Cawthorn is mired in controversy, facing the very real possibility that the end of his electoral career might come as quickly as it began. Emboldened by Cawthorn’s miscues, misdeeds and array of indiscretions, seven Republican challengers have lined up to try to take him out in Tuesday’s primary, party leaders have abandoned him, and other MAGA firebrands are keeping their distance what with the escalating storm of even just the past few months.
Police stopped him for driving with a revoked license (again). Airport security stopped him for trying to bring a gun onto a plane (again). He made outlandish and unsubstantiated comments on an obscure podcast about orgies and cocaine use by his Capitol Hill colleagues. He called the Ukrainian president a “thug,” he suggested Nancy Pelosi was an alcoholic (she doesn’t drink), and the seemingly ceaseless gush of unsavory news has included allegations of insider trading, pictures of shuttered district offices, a leaked tranche of salacious images and videos, and ongoing proof in FEC filings that he’s a prodigious fundraiser but a profligate spender as well. All of this comes on top of multiple women in multiple places accusing him of sexual harassment, his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6 of last year, his growing catalogue of alarming provocations on social media and on the House floor, and his politically imprudent decision to announce he was switching districts only to reverse course. His marriage amidst all this lasted less than a year.
If Cawthorn had had the emotional stability to be humble and simply do his job, he would have been fine. He was given a tremendous opportunity that few mortals have been given. He was utterly unqualified, but he had one quality that has often trumped lack of credentials and that was being at the exact right place at the right time.
He had good looks and a tragic story and he was able to parlay that into a seat in Congress. Rather than quietly thanking the God he so vociferously claims to believe in for his good fortune and proceeding forward humbly, his ego got in the driver’s seat and then it all went to hell in record time.
The scope of Cawthorn’s troubles is broad, the implications transcending mere politics. More than 70 interviews with people who know Cawthorn, who have worked for him and against him, allies and enemies, activists and operatives and longtime watchers of politics here in the mountains of western North Carolina, paint a picture of a man in crisis. Cawthorn, they say, is an immature college dropout with a thin work resume, a scofflaw and serial embellisher who was neither qualified nor prepared for the responsibility and the scrutiny that comes with the office he holds. They describe him as a person whose ongoing physical pain and insecurities have made him unusually susceptible to the twisted incentives of a political environment and a Trump-led GOP that prizes perhaps above all else outrage and partisan attack.
“Politics is like a vice amplifier … And then when you’re a young man who has a terrible accident like that, and your identity is kind of stripped from you, all of that is amplified even more.”
One of my college professors was in an electric wheelchair – he had some use of his arms and hands, but otherwise… He talked about it some: they told him he’d never drive, and he got a modified van and drove. They said he couldn’t be an engineer, and he got a PhD in math and taught computer science. And he died at 72.
I met my friend in the wheelchair in night law school. He had taught music in high school and decided he wanted to become a lawyer and have his own practice, which eventually he did. He had pain. We talked about it. I saw his meds, etc. He got a divorce in the time I knew him and we talked about that as well.
Cawthorn was just too immature to rise to the occasion. I think it’s as simple as that.
Let’s not forget how much the magat party feeds these people the pablum of how bad their lives are and how they are not responsible for their shitty place in society–it is the fault of ….whatever, it’s just not their fault. That is the shit they scream every waking moment and I would be surprised, greatly so, if it didn’t have an effect on Maddie. Yes, he occupied a position of responsibility he was in no way prepared for but true to magat form, rather than work at it so become prepared, he made a fool of himself. Look at the president he supported–it’s as if he modeled his entire, short-lived, political career on trump’s take on the presidency. Problem is there aren’t 70 M idiots in his western Carolina district.
I’m still at a loss as to how having “no control over” his penis meant he wet the bed. Yes, due to male biology, urine is released via the penis and a guy who *really* has to pee but doesn’t have immediate access to a bathroom may squeeze his penis to prevent unwanted urination but that’s not usually an option for guys who are in bed (and presumably asleep). If the bladder needs to be released at night and the guy doesn’t get up, the bed gets soaked no matter how much “control over” his penis he may have.
And, um, quite frankly, if he was really having that much of a problem, there ARE solutions. Adult diapers might be embarrassing but they do a decent job of not having to get up and change the sheets after an “accident.” And catheters are also a solution (not exactly a pleasant one but if he doesn’t have control over his penis, then he probably lacks the ability to feel a catheter being stuck up into his urethra).
Of course, it all just sounds like he was looking for sympathy when he’d happily turn around and ram his wheelchair into a blind or deaf person just for kicks.
As a native Tarheel, I have no sympathy for Cawthorn. There existed a basic psychological disconnect long before his accident. That merely helped pull the pin completely out of his grenade. He never was ambitious enough to work for anything he aspired to. He is one of those people born with a sense of privilege, a budding narcissistic Trump who actually cried while secretly plotting how to use his “tragedy” to his own benefit to boost his ego. Has he not had that accident, I predict that his life would have been one of the typial ne’er-do-well willing to go through life grifting and blaming others when his grifts fell apart. Cawthorn needs help, but I do not see him accepting the reality of the kind of help he ought to try to get. He surely hasn’t yet accepted the embarrassment he brought to his home state.